Trump's Cabinet may fulfill GOP promise of small government — for better or worse

President Franklin Roosevelt, seen with his Cabinet on March 5, 1937, expanded government to respond to the Great Depression. (AP)

The day after a presidential election, the winner's aides remind him of how many votes he didn't get, and he thinks he'd like to have some of them when he's up for re-election. Inexorably, yesterday's campaign pledges are sent for further study to a task force or committee, never more to be seen.

As a result, while America's ship of state may tack a little to the left or a little to the right from one president to the next, the big issues remain unresolved.

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And of those, the most vexatious question is: Which is better — big government, whose size enables it to tackle big problems, or small government, with limited resources that ensure it stands aside while ordinary citizens decide how they want their problems solved?

Until now, a convincing answer hasn't been demonstrated. But a reading of the tea leaves of Donald Trump's Cabinet nominations shows he intends to end a debate kindled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt 83 years ago.

Roosevelt's New Deal transformed Washington, D.C., from a sleepy little town into the octopus-like center of a vast bureaucracy whose tentacles reach every American home.

When Roosevelt occupied the White House in 1933, there were seven members of a president's Cabinet. Now there are 15. The difference represents government functions added since Roosevelt touted his administration as the champion of the "forgotten man," ordinary citizens losing homes and jobs during the Great Depression.

Opponents insisted that New Deal programs — like unemployment benefits and old-age insurance — would be the nation's ruin. In 1934, a Chicago Tribune editorial cartoon showed a donkey-drawn wagon going headlong down a dirt road as bureaucrats tossed bags of money overboard. Off to a side, Leon Trotsky, of Bolshevik Revolution fame, was writing a "Plan For America." A sardonic caption reads: "It worked in Russia."

The small-is-beautiful theme has been echoed by successive Republican presidents.

Gerald Ford said: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take from you everything you have." (1974)

Ronald Reagan said: "The government isn't the solution to our problems, government is the problem." (1981)

But President-elect Donald Trump seems deadly serious about reducing government to a shadow of itself.

The virtues and vices of big government are known. But small government hasn't been tried for decades. It is like a shimmering fountain on a desert horizon. To a thirsty traveler it is miraculous — until he gets close enough to see if it is a mirage.

Trump's nominations signal his determination to prove that shrinking government is good for America. Several of those named so far are opposed to their department's function. Mind you, they are not just determined to make a few changes, maybe cut the fat out of budgets. They want no part of the philosophy upon which those departments were founded.

The congressional act that created the Department of Labor said its mandate was "to foster, promote and develop the welfare of working people, to improve their working conditions." But Trump's nominee, Andrew Puzder, a fast-food mogul, favors replacing workers with robot order-takers, explaining:

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"If you're making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive — this is not rocket science."

Rick Perry, (Energy) who reportedly is to be named head of that department, once vowed to abolish it.

Jeff Sessions (Justice), who as attorney general would supervise its Civil Rights Division, said in the U.S. Senate: "Almost no one coming from the Dominican Republic to the United States is coming here because they have a provable skill. ... And they're creating a false document to show that these are relatives or their spouses and they are married when it is not so."

For good measure, Trump's transition team has asked the Energy Department for the names of employees who attended meetings or conferences on climate change.

So if Trump's appointees are faithful to their words, the small-government theory will finally be put to the test. With Republicans controlling Congress, President Trump can turn the clock back to where it was before President Roosevelt started tinkering with an economy largely free of government interference.

Of course, millions of Americans will be the experiment's guinea pigs — deprived of medical care, breathing increasingly polluted air and at the mercy of employers determined to maximize profits.